According to Microsoft’s official definition, Team Rooms, like chat rooms, “provide teams with a space to discuss work in progress, ask questions, share status, and clarify issues that arise.” Sounds great, but I find that most teams I train, coach, and consult are using other products for this type of collaboration. Add to that a general feeling that Microsoft isn’t innovating within this feature, and I’d pretty much written off team rooms.
That is, until Brian Randell showed me an alternate use case … Team Rooms can be used to simply let you know what’s been going on within a team project without any direct action by the team. Here’s how …
1. Navigate to the room and add events for build completions, code changes, work item updates, etc …
2. Go on vacation (or otherwise chillax), return, and ask the team room wassup …
3. Click the date at the top and see wassup on previous days as well.
Now if we could only search within a room, that would be awesome. If you agree, please vote.
